


Dar-te-ei

by BruceChickinson



Category: One Piece
Genre: Based on a song, Birthday, Fluff, M/M, Zoro being adorably unaware of how adorable he is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-10-31 16:19:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17852984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BruceChickinson/pseuds/BruceChickinson
Summary: In which Zoro tries too hard for his mossbrain's sake to think of a gift for Sanji's birthday.





	Dar-te-ei

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HikariMat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HikariMat/gifts).



> A little something for Sanji's bday (my cell phone changed it to 'bgay' and I think it's very appropriate lol). I wrote this several months ago, but I wanted to post on 3/2 
> 
> About my uncontrolable desire to give gifts, and this is one of them.
> 
> Inspired by an [homonym brazillian song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrPHIqMfQDo) by Marcelo Jeneci, translation [here](https://bruce-chickinson.tumblr.com/post/183166182944/dar-te-ei-marcelo-jeneci-english-translation).

Just one week until Sanji's birthday. Zoro forced his mind to analyze all possibilities, but he couldn’t think of something good enough. And the worst of it was that for his boyfriend it always seemed so easy. First of all, he cooked divinely. That alone could generate the best gifts any taste buds had ever felt. But his talent for gifts was not entirely credited to his cooking skills: the blond knew how to please, he knew how to read people, he knew what to buy, he was elegant and refined. The swordsman hated to admit it, but Sanji had a good natural taste and Zoro... let's just say he was not lucky enough to have been blessed with such quality. He insisted stubbornly that this was because the cook was too prissy, but he had to painfully accept reality. Zoro spent February trying to think of what to give the cook, he even went so far as to ask embarrassingly for the girls' advice, which only gave rise to laughs and useless suggestions.

 

Zoro thought of giving flowers. It was elegant, Robin suggested. It was cheap, said Nami. If he picked them himself he would be within his current 0 berries budget. But flowers wither and die, Zoro could not think of anything more depressing than that.

 

Zoro thought of giving something to eat, like chocolates. But he had no talent whatsoever for cooking and even if he had, it certainly wouldn’t compare with anything made by Sanji. And chocolates get eaten and vanish.

 

Zoro thought of giving some ingredient instead of some grease made by him. He could try to get some rare fish from the cook's book, ultra-hard to catch, one of those he’d have to spend hours trying to fish. Just thinking about the gigantic effort made him literally fall asleep. Ironically, a guy who lifted absurd weights zillions of times a day was concurrently the laziest being in the universe.

 

Zoro considered giving a bottle of booze. He would very much like to be presented with one on his birthday. But, he knew Sanji didn’t drink any cheap stuff. It would have to be the best wine or the best champagne or the best sake. His pocket was sore just by imagining it.

 

Zoro thought about giving a record. Come to think of it, the cook had never been much associated with music, except for the times when the blonde was humming involuntarily while cooking. It was one of the most charming little things about him, from the velvety timbre of his voice to the hips that swayed in the same rhythm, hypnotizing. He even asked for Brook's advice, but records repeat, records scratch.

 

Zoro thought of giving a suit. The cook loved them, that was fact. But it was an audacious gift: he would have to choose the right suit, which he had no idea how to do. Besides, he would have to be indebted to the witch forever if he wished to bring something minimally decent.

 

Zoro thought of giving something simpler then, a tie. Though simpler, it had the same problem suit had: Zoro's complete lack of sense of style, which would certainly result in him buying a green and striped tie matching his horrid haramaki.

 

Zoro thought about writing something. The problem was that he couldn’t even remember the last time he'd held a pencil; his already ugly handwriting was probably rusty and unreadable by now. Besides, papers rip and blur.

 

Whatever the treat, gift, present he considered, it always came with the setback of getting old, fading, ending. Everything seemed so ephemeral and bad. It was then that he thought of the only thing that had an almost lifelong guarantee, something really good, modesty aside. Something he could offer wholeheartedly.

 

He was facing the cook in the crow's nest at the end of the party, where he said he would give his gift.

 

“Myself.” He announced, his voice nearly inaudible.

 

"Really, Marimo… is that the best excuse you could think of?" He said, trying to laugh, but his face showed a little disappointment. Why did he even expect something else from that brute? Sanji had already heard something on those lines before. It was pretty usual for some of the guys at Baratie to say their presence alone was already a gift just for laughs, or because they didn’t remember buying something, the apotheosis of laziness in terms of birthday presents. “It would be better if you said you forgot.” He added, almost pouting.

 

Zoro frowned irritated.

 

"No." His voice was still a little low, though the irritation of the blonde's slowness had made the decibels rise a little. "All the other crap I thought of giving you before are over there." He said, pointing to a box in the corner of the wall.

The blond looked incredulous and bent down to take a closer look at the compartment. A bouquet of flowers without most of the petals and full of hideous bugs on its branches, which made Sanji immediately drop the object. A box of homemade chocolate cookies at the same time burnt and raw, God knows how someone had achieved this culinary feat. A... raw... fish which Sanji immediately recognized as one of those who illustrated one of his favorite pages of his book. A surprisingly expensive bottle of sake. A Jazz album. A set of suit and tie from an unexpectedly good shop, though the suit was probably the most picturesque of the entire stock and was accompanied by a tie with the most horrendous print possible. And a paper with some indecipherable hieroglyphs written on it.

It was then that Sanji realized: Zoro was not joking. He was not even being romantic, he didn’t even know how to do it, poor marimo. This was just genuinely the best gift he could think of.

 

Sanji began to laugh uncontrollably. Zoro once again frowned his anguloid eyebrows. The blond, however, was laughing a beautiful and genuine laugh, surprisingly devoid of malice. If Zoro knew how romantic he looked in that situation he would probably have the cutest blush now. Lucky for him, he was dumb as a rock.

 

 

“This one dies

Gets old

Ends and cries

Loves and wants,

Despairs

This one goes

But this one comes back”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Happy Birthday, Sanji <3


End file.
